100/100

[originally written on my blog]

I don't understand how you make a film that looks like this and then go on to make 32 subsequent films (and counting) that look nothing like this. But then, neither do I understand how you achieve the perfect synthesis of your many gifts and somehow conclude that you totally whiffed, to the point where you beg the studio to destroy the negative. Each of the film's tricky balancing acts—between visual beauty and verbal dexterity, between wit and pathos, between the specific and the universal—couldn't be more sublimely realized; like most every masterpiece, it's a tiny, insular story that nonetheless embodies human folly at its most ubiquitous and grandiose. That Woody chooses to make…

“Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat—oh, I love this. New York was his town, and it always would be.”

Is life fundamentally sweet or sour? Depends on your point of view, I suppose. You get a new job, make a new friend, fall in love—life is honeyed and worth living. You lose that job, have a falling out with that friend, fall out of love—life is curdled and should be thrown out. The funny thing is, those circumstances don’t parcel themselves out discretely. They tend to coexist. You get a promotion but have a fight with your spouse about the…

Film #3 of Florin's Recommendations

“I feel like we're in a Noel Coward play. Someone should be making martinis.”

Isaac Davies is the typical Woody Allen character, an underachieving intellectual who is not confident enough to do what he wants to do in life, someone who is living a romantically –and of course sexually- problematic life and seems to struggle with the endless complexities of human relationships, someone who has always been one step away from achieving success but the fear of rejection and the lack of confidence have kept him from reaching greatness and happiness, an individual who is desperately searching for the meaning of life in a time and place where things- thanks to modernization- are changing so…

Few will deny that Woody Allen, as a director, is formulaic as fuck, especially thematically as nine out of ten of his pictures revolve around male-female romances with some oddity about them - often triangular or double-triangular to add extra conflict. Personally though, I really don’t mind since the format appeals to me and Woody’s releases, even his newest, manage to inflict on me the emotions they attempt to inspire: a smile, a bit of warmth and light upset due to characters’ choices and habits. Manhatten, following his most acclaimed feature Annie Hall, may as one of his earliest efforts have rolled out the red carpet for his impressive filmography and this fact is obvious from its romantic-comedy structure. Yet,…

From the stunning opening sequence with the familiar wail of 'Rhapsody in Blue', Woody Allen guides us round the nooks and crannies of his home city. His fractured voiceover introduces the city as one of the main characters; as complex, loveable and frustrating as the movie's human populous.

He introduces other cities this way in his later, 'European tour' movies, but he only ever gives us a tourist's picture postcard of the likes of London, Barcelona and Paris. Here, it is intensely personal. He is one tiny cell of New York's lifeblood, and New York flows similarly in his veins.

Take the famous shot from the poster: as self-absorbed, neurotic, inconsistent and maddeningly burdened with First-World problems Isaac, Mary and…

Second viewing; first in over a decade—upgraded from (a strong) four stars to five.

Always been my favorite Allen—a director whom I've warmed to considerately over the years, as one might expect; much easier to really appreciate his pessimistic, self-deprecating, gloomy brand of comedy (and drama) when you've experienced your fair share of (Jewish) angst yourself—because (a) it's just light years ahead of anything else he's done with the camera, and (b) there's a consistent richness of substance, a thoughtfulness and realness, in the numerous connections and character development that's truly pristine. Thought all of this was even more true today, the most prominent example being Isaac's relationship with the teenage Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), which simultaneously feels doomed from the…

Woody Allen's signature sardonic wit can get very tiresome (looking at you Annie), but at its best it soars to heights of almost incomprehension. It hooked me immediately. It has one of the most stellar openings with beautiful shots of New York in b&w, and Allen neurotically trying to write a chapter in his book, never quite finding the right words. 

It goes from overly pretentious to endlessly fascinating in a blink of an eye. Literally one scene I'm rolling my eyes as Allen goes on (multiple) tangents of his conquests as a lover, and the next im endlessly fascinated by his self deprecating in the same topic. He boderlines pedophilia where I want to vomit in one scene and…